Adobe Photoshop Can't Cover Up Your Heart
by Daemon Wings
Summary: OC Time It's starting to look like it wasn't just "No Taxation without Representation" driving American's to have a little Tea Party...


_**A.N.:**__Hey guys! Sorry I've been gone so long!! I've had a ton of computer problems lately, ranging from being grounded so no Internet to switching all my files to the tablet, to having the tablet break and taken into the shop with all my Fan Fiction files on it, to leaning the tablet is unfixable, so...sorry. _

_However, I have a ton of new updates! So, I hope that's compensation. _

_Also—A quick note... I want to thank John Green, the author of the book _Looking for Alaska,_ the book in which one of these characters is based (loosely, I may add...okay, maybe not so loosely, but she is still original! Just similar. Like eye color and car, and the smoking. But that's about it...). It's kind of obvious who. I want to thank so much Liane (known more commonly as lianeandthemusic) for her amazing songs (a lot of which are used in this story with permission). I want to thank Peter and the Evil Overlord List for some of the hilarity and lines, and I'd like to thank both the creative team behind National Treasure and the Disney Company. Oh, and of course, anyone who reads this._

_So, enjoy. And please review. Even if you hated my story. Thanks. :]_

**bdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbd**

**guitar practice**

"Hey, girlie!" shouted a 22 year old woman, walking up the wooden spiral stairs to a small loft so familiar to her. She fluffed her curling copper hair, smiling as she walked to her best friend, seated on the window seat with a classic acoustic guitar.

"Still at it, I see. You've been up here for days just playing, Alaska. Lemme see what's left of your fingers...I mean really, at least use a pick, girlie," said the mocha-skinned woman, reaching for her raven-haired friends arms.

"Pheobe! No, I have to run this through!" Alaska whined, but her friend had her arms in hand.

"Oh my gosh, Alaska..." Pheobe whispered. "This is insane! You have blisters and calluses all over your hands! And you've practically sliced your thumb off! Not to mention your forefinger. Jeez! Take a break," Pheobe complained, her chocolate eyes boring into Alaska. She pulled the acoustic from the green eyed 21 year old, receiving a squeal and tug-a-war from the guitarist.

"Fine! God damn it, Alaska, whatever. I try to help you, and all you want to do is hide here and play your guitar, but whatever! I'm out of here." Pheobe snapped, standing, and storming towards the stairs down from the loft. Pausing, she turned and glanced back at Alaska, who tucked a blue-black corkscrew curl behind her triple-pierced ear and fingered an A minor chord on the neck of her guitar.

"Wait." Pheobe sighed, and stepped once back to the guitarist. "What are you waiting for, anyways?"

Alaska progressed to an F, then to C. She hesitated on her reply as she switched her fingers to a G major.

"A phone call."

**office space**

"Ben! Hey!" the blue-eyed brunette stood from a small desk in his apartment, rushing to his friend and holding up a hand for a high-five. When his hand was unmet, the man awkwardly lowered his hand. "Hey, um, come check this out..."

Sitting in a rolling office chair, the brunette rolled to the laptop on his desk. "I, uh, I found this site. Some chick with a theory about the Boston Tea Party... and how maybe it wasn't just tea powder in those barrels the American's dumped in the harbor... I, er, I think she may...possibly...be onto something."

The older brunette man looking over his shoulder read a passage of text on the blog displayed on the screen. "Yeah, maybe. Maybe not. But Riley, there are almost thousands of theories online of treasures, or secrets," Ben replied, leaning down to speak into his best friend's ear. "What makes this one so different?"

Riley gave a deep sigh and placed a hand over one half of his face. Sliding his hand down and off his face, he looked to his friend. "I...I, uh..." the techie stammered. His laptop then gave a series of beeps, as a pop-up displayed an alert meant for two days before. As Riley read the screen, a faint blush found its way to his face, as well as a feeling of guilt and self-hatred.

"Oh my God," he mumbled, covering his nose and mouth. "Oh my God, Ben, I have to make a phone call. I...oh God...I'll be right back..." Riley stammered, jumping up and rushing to the kitchen phone. Checking the number on the screen, he quickly dialed and held the phone to his ear, beginning to pace the living room.

"Hello?" a woman's voice asked, quickly and excitedly.

"Hey, Alaska." Riley replied, glancing at the screen for the name. Through the phone he could hear the sound of a guitar hit the ground.

"Oh, damn it! Hang on, Riley... Damn it, Mace..." Alaska replied, then gave a short laugh and spoke into the phone, "So...um...I take it either you're in need of a technical help desk, or you're the kid who thinks I'm right about the Tea Party."

**guitar practice (with an audience)**

"So, this is my loft...Rather, my living space. Heh. I room with my friend Pheobe, and she's out busy with classes today, so basically I've got the whole apartment to myself. Buuuut...I'd rather stick to my loft. Sorry, guys." Alaska chuckled softly, rounding the final spiral of stairs and immediately running to her window seat and picking up her guitar.

"Oh, you play?" Ben asked, walking up to the raven-haired guitarist. She smirked, holding her corkscrew-curls up in a ponytail, then tying the elastic band around her hair.

"Yeah, I suppose you could say that. Sounds like a tone-deaf girl killing a horse with a guitar, though," Alaska replied.

"Oh, don't listen to her, she's being modest," a new female's voice spoke. Alaska stood, rushing to the stairs to hug Pheobe. "She's been up here playing straight for four days." She looked to Alaska with a friendly glare. "Show 'em a bit of what you were working on the other day, Ally!"

"Fine, whatever!" Alaska replied with a smile, picking up Macy the acoustic and arranging her fingers for an A Minor. "It's a work in progress, but whatever. Pheobe, you owe me. You know I hate guitar practice with an audience..." The girl continued. Then she started playing through the progression.

A Minor, then she started singing under her breath as she went through the F, C, and G major chords.

"I hope you're somewhere warm at night, like the flowers in your car, but you've escaped a labyrinth of suffering, wherever you are. I have a piece of you, tucked away deep inside my mind, memories of your poetry, and drinking your cheap wine..." the guitarist sang softly. She put her hand over the strings to stop the reverberation. "Tada," she said quickly.

Pheobe shook her head. "Oh my God, Alaska. You've been keeping my up with, what I can describe in no other words, passionate singing, and now when you actually perform you're a wimp!" She exclaimed. "I guess the only difference is you were drunk..."

"Wait, wait, wait, wait. Drunk?" Riley asked. Alaska laughed.

"Drinking your cheap wine," she repeated.

**coffee and tea**

"I'll take a small latte', please," Alaska asked.

"Just a coffee for me," Riley added, and the waitress nodded before walking back to the kitchen.

"So, you think I'm right, eh?" Alaska asked of him, smiling. Riley gave a short nod. With a chuckle, the girl shook her head with disbelief. "And I thought you just wanted to see me, Riley. I haven't spoken to you since that damned Templar Treasure hunt. I thought you were like, my best friend. Do you realize how worried I was? I freaked out about you, man." She shook her head again.

"I'm sorry, Alaska!" Riley replied, looking apologetic and guilty. "I got wrapped up in meeting new people, and forgive me for not taking the minute to stop running for my life and think, 'Hmm. Maybe I should call my old high-school friend who I recently learned smokes a call.' Sorry." The waitress came by and placed two cups on the table. Riley grabbed one and took a sip, looking down and avoiding eye contact.

"Oh my God. This is why you're mad at me? Because I smoked?" Alaska asked, glaring furiously at the brunette. Her green eyes kept looking for his blue. He effectively avoided contact, looking completely innocent while doing so. "Riley!" the girl exclaimed. "Look, yeah, I smoked. So what? I found myself in it. Insane, sure. But so is my theory, so was the theory of the Templar Treasure. And that lead to your big break! And the cigarettes and drinks led to mine." She shrugged as Riley looked up with a confused and disgusted face and took a drink of latte'.

"Really?" the man asked, sarcastically.

"Yeah," Alaska replied in a flat tone. "Some might even say that in that high school's Smoking Hole, I found...oh, what's the phrase..." the girl recalled. Riley spoke up as she remembered. "A Great Perhaps," they said simultaneously. Alaska giggled, and Riley even managed a smile.

"Yeah, I guess so. But you're off it- Right?" he asked. Alaska nodded. What the brunette man didn't know was she was completely lying. "So really. If we were to follow up on this Tea Party theory, where would we have to go?" Riley asked, taking another drink of coffee.

Alaska smirked and took a quick sip of her own drink. "You really don't know?" she asked. "Straight and fast. We go right to the source. Up for a road trip, Riley?"

**the gang's all here**

"Role!" Alaska shouted out, her black ponytail bouncing as she jumped the last four stairs down from her loft. One curl was loose, framing the side of her face that her side-swept bangs liked to favor. She put hands on her hips and stared at the crowd gathered by her front door.

"Alaska, do you honestly-" Pheobe started, but a backpack being thrown at her shut her up.

"Pheobe...check," the raven-haired woman murmured.

"Here?" Riley guessed, and was answered by a similar backpack.

"Hi, Alaska," Ben smirked, and received a backpack himself.

"Hello," a blonde woman greeted, giving Alaska a half wave and was answered, like the rest, with a backpack. Alaska then threw a backpack over her shoulders and started towards the door.

"Let's move!" she shouted, opening the door and walking to a light blue car. "Er... Can someone throw me the keys?" she asked. Pheobe laughed and threw them towards the guitarist. "Thank you," Alaska replied, unlocking the car and getting tin the driver seat. "My dear friends, this is the completely crappy Blue Citrus, say hello and be nice."

The blonde smirked and slid into the backseat, next to Ben. Then Riley climbed in. "Excuse me, Abigail, But I think you're sitting on the seatbelt..." he said, only to have Pheobe and Alaska burst into laughter.

"Ha ha! Seatbelt? What seatbelt?" the raven-haired guitarist asked. "Just hang on and enjoy the ride, buddy. We're off to the Boston Harbor. Anyone like some tea?"

**scuba diving**

"Are you sure this is legal?" Riley asked cautiously, twisting in the cold, waist-high water.

"Riley, you should know by now. Nothing we ever do is legal," Ben replied with a smirk. Alaska smiled in reply, and dove off. Ben followed, wading further into the water as he placed the breather into his mouth and then submerging. Riley adjusted his goggles and went under, and Pheobe and Abigail looked to each other, shrugged, and dove in.

Alaska checked her watch 15 minutes in. Closing her eyes for a moment, she stopped swimming forward and instead shot straight down. The boys followed loyally, but Abigail stopped completely. Pheobe looked to her, her eyes saying what she couldn't.

"What's wrong?"

Abi, looking slightly frightened, shook her head violently and pointed down, then gesturing "dead". Pheobe nodded to show she understood, then smirked as well as she could without swallowing sea water. Grabbing the blonde's wrist, she dove down further.

Riley had caught up to Alaska, and was now swimming in parallel to her. Every so often he'd look over at her, seeing a look of determination in her green eyes, a fire driving her forward. He watched her blue-black curls straighten out slightly the further down they swam, watched it sway as Alaska swam.

Suddenly, the girl stopped. Her jade eyes wide through her goggles, she gave a muted scream, turning to face Ben, Pheobe, and Abigail and waving her arms to them. She pointed down and forward, in what was (compared to the last check of location) a north-east-ish direction. She turned again and kicked her legs together, swimming differently than before. This stroke was harder, and faster, and with her swim-fins and slightly iridescent wetsuit, made her look like a mermaid. Riley laughed to himself, mentally so as not to choke, as he watched her go, waiting for Ben and the others.

Ben caught up, looked behind to see Abi and Pheobe were only 10 or so meters away, and waved to Riley to follow Alaska down to the old, rotting barrels they could just barely see. Once down, they saw the guitarist carefully running her fingers through half-dissolved tea powder, looking for anything that wasn't tea. Anything at all. She kicked at the barrel she was checking and swam to another, doing the same. Riley looked to Ben, and Ben looked to Riley. They both chose a barrel and started looking. Once Abigail and Pheobe were at the bottom, they, too, began searching.

The longer the five searched the barrels, the more tears that welled up in Alaska's eyes. She gave another scream, and kicked her barrel multiple times, until her foot hit something in the tea powder that was hard. Really hard. And her mouth opened as if to gasp, letting her breather fall as she froze.

Pheobe saw first, screaming with her mouth closed as she swam to her best friend and grasped her breather, trying to get Alaska to close her mouth around it. Riley looked up at Pheobe's screams, and swam over, wrapping his arms around Alaska's waist and pushing off the sand coated seafloor, Pheobe pulling Alaska up to the surface as well, still struggling to get the stubborn femme to breathe. Alaska barely had enough time to grasp the object she kicked as the two dragged her up, and she slowly started sinking into unconsciousness. As Pheobe's attempts continued to fail, both brunettes looked to each other in panic and kicked harder towards the surface.

Ben tried to swim up to help, but Abigail grabbed his leg and pulled him down. She looked to him and tried to give him a look that read, "They've got it. We didn't come all this way to give up. Finding nothing is better than giving up." And fortunately Ben understood, nodding slowly as he watched the two drag Alaska back to the surface.

**thank god it's white**

Riley sat beside Pheobe in the waiting room of the hospital, overridden with fear and panic where as Pheobe seemed calm as can be, peacefully sitting as she read a magazine.

"How can you just sit there?!" He asked her, trying not to scream. The dark-skinned brunette didn't look up. "She may have drowned, and you're reading about 10 Ways to Clear Skin!"

Pheobe laughed. "That's silly." She flipped a page in the magazine, and continued reading. "I'm reading about 13 Ways to Catch a Great Guy." She looked up at Riley, smirked, and then continued reading. "So, why do you even care? I've known her since 6th grade, and you're just a treasure hunter who thinks she may have been right about the Boston Tea Party."

Riley stopped tapping his foot impatiently and looked at Pheobe. "I went to high school with her," he protested. "I worked with her a few times... and we... er," he tried, pausing to try and remember. Why did her care so much? She was just the band-geek-trombone-player that played acoustic guitar in the commons, and cut class to get drunk with friends in the surrounding wood, or sneak off campus to the Smoking Hole. So why did he care about her health?

"Um...anyone here for an Alaska Carson?" a nurse asked, holding open a door as she glanced at her clipboard. Riley stood, as did Pheobe, and the two walked to the door. "Relation?" the nurse asked.

"Best friend, and roommate," Pheobe answered.

"Er, friend?" Riley responded, nervously. The nurse shrugged and ushered them in, walking them to a small room.

"Here she is," the nurse said, gesturing for the two to sit down. "Her doctor will be with you in a moment."

Riley nodded, sitting beside the guitarist's bed. He smiled softly, seeing her lay on the cot, tucked in under white linen blankets. "Heh," he started. "Thank God it's white and not blue, eh?" Pheobe giggled.

"Hi, I'm Dr. Melissa," a tall blonde announced, stepping into the room.

"Melissa? Is that your first or last name?" Pheobe asked, standing. The blonde laughed.

"Last. Dr. Marnee Melissa. So, I take it you are the two that brought Miss Carson in?" Dr. Melissa asked. Riley nodded.

"What's the damage?" Pheobe asked, standing beside the unconscious Alaska. Marnee grabbed the clipboard from the end of the bed and read quickly before responding.

"She's suffered a broken foot and slight brain damage, actually. I'm going to guess, from all of you being soaking wet, you were swimming and she almost drowned?"

"Er, yeah, we can put it that way," Riley replied, smiling nervously. "Will she be okay?"

"She should be fine, after a few days on a ventilator and some good night's rest. It looks like she hasn't slept in days," Dr. Melissa said, looking to the guitarist.

"She hasn't," Pheobe confirmed. "She's been up solid for three days, playing guitar and waiting for this kid to call," she mumbled. Riley blushed softly. Marnee looked at Alaska's fingers.

"Yes, that would explain these calluses and imprints..." she said to herself, jotting down notes on the clip board.

"So, what will the brain damage due to her?" Riley asked, placing his hand on top of Alaska's through the sheets.

"From the MRI, it looks like she'll have slight amnesia. Don't worry, she'll only have forgotten the last week or so. Oh, and we found this in her pack," Marnee replied, holding out what looked to be a large rock. Pheobe grabbed it, and it opened, the bottom falling down and a soggy paper falling to the ground.

"Oh dear," Pheobe whispered.

"What does that say?" Dr. Melissa asked, as Riley picked up the paper.

His blue eyes scanned the paper over a few times. The ink was clearly smeared from the water, and so it took Riley a little while before he could be able to honestly conclude the jyst of the note. With a smile, the techie replied, "It says Alaska was right."


End file.
